


International Fanworks Day Knew She Shouldn't Have a Crush on Columbus Day

by MockingBirbosaur



Category: Calendar - Fandom, International Fanworks Day - Fandom
Genre: 2021, Eventual Romance, F/M, International Fanworks Day, International Fanworks Day 2021, Slow Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 12:34:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29489880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MockingBirbosaur/pseuds/MockingBirbosaur
Summary: Love is complicated.
Relationships: International Fanworks Day/Columbus Day
Comments: 1





	International Fanworks Day Knew She Shouldn't Have a Crush on Columbus Day

International Fanworks Day knew she shouldn't like anything about Columbus Day.

When she savored delicious chocolate, or grooved to some trans-Atlantically great-grandparented rhythm & blues, she shouldn't think about him. She should think about his reverse-retcon sibling Indigenous Peoples' Day (celebrating the REAL reason our days even have chocolate) or Black History Month (née Negro History Week.)

But deep inside, she knew that neither of those occasions would ever have been born, if Columbus Day hadn't blundered and stumbled through the long-ago calendar like a bull in a china shop.

He was a day who hadn't even known what side of the world he'd started out on. You literally could not get any more lost than that.

What a mandate!

But something about his misguided yet courageous idiocy stirred her. It takes guts to cross an ocean that hasn't even been discovered yet. I say hadn't been discovered because, to quote the proverb, it takes all sides to make an ocean. If some of the sides are missing, you don't really have an ocean at all, just a tilting and very temporary body of water.

Columbus Day might not have known where he was, or what peoples' discovery had prompted his existence. He was a nincompoop!

But she loved to fantasize about him anyway.

What if, she asked herself, Columbus Day had been born when the First Nations had built a mighty canoe and sailed east? What if they'd discovered Africa, made friends, formed an alliance, and told colonialism to take a long walk off a short pier? There's nothing wrong with writing alternate history fics, she told herself. As one of her myriad friends liked to say, "There's no wrong way to fantasize."

She shouldn't feel ashamed. Yet Fanny (her nickname among some of her friends) still did.

What would Columbus Day even be called, in her alternate scenario? Could she even guess? Most of Fanny didn't know the languages of the peoples who would have named him. Some of those peoples and their languages might not even exist anymore, in her world.

Fanny remembered something she'd read. One reason the Native Americans had died in such numbers after Columbus Day's early nativity was, the Europeans had developed such terrible diseases from living side by side with so many different kinds of livestock for thousands of years. The Americans had been living cleaner, one might say.

But even if the First Nation explorers had avoided Europe completely, Africa had some pretty bad diseases too. If the First Nations had discovered the Old World first, caught the Old World's terrible diseases one by one, and the New World had been devastated by epidemic after epidemic...at least the Europeans might not already have been swarming all over the New World's coasts, ready to grab as much land as they could before the survivors recovered. If the First Nations weren't already fighting European invaders in their homelands, maybe the First Nation explorers would have had more of a chance to discover vaccination, or other ways to resist the waves of disease. Maybe they would have discovered China and learned about smallpox vaccination there. More of the First Nations people might have survived.

Some of Fanny's friends said she got lost in fantasies too easily. But some of Fanny's best friends said that was one of her strengths, too. They loved that about her. Spending time with Fanny and her imagination could be so much fun!

No wonder Fanny liked to pen fanfics on her little lapdesk, and sometimes her rickety laptop computer, while she got some fresh air and sunlight, sitting on a bench in the park.

A shadow fell upon Fanny's papers and furious scribbling. "Why are you blocking my light?" she said. "Can't you see I'm busy?" She looked up.

A man wearing a coat and hat five hundred years out of fashion blushed. "I'm sorry," he said. "I couldn't help but notice...I mean, some people talk."

"I suppose they do," Fanny said. "So what?"

"There are many kinds of love," Columbus Day said. "There's the kind that loves what one believes is there. There's the kind that doesn't really care, but only covets. There's the kind that is well-meaning, but sadly misguided." Columbus Day sighed. "I've known too much of those. All three of them."

Fanny felt sympathetic. That was indeed the tragedy of Columbus Day's life, she thought. The loves that gave birth to him, and raised him. "I suppose that's true," Fanny said, "but I like to think, somewhere in your parentage, and your youth, there was a brave love of adventure too. An honest love, of its kind."

Columbus smiled. "I have to appreciate my parentage at least a little, when I remember that. Thank you for reminding me. It should make dealing with Father's Day at least a little less awkward for me." He chuckled.

"You're welcome," Fanny said.

"But there are other kinds of love, too." Columbus Day noted. "There's the kind of love that sees not what a person has been, and is, but also what a person could be. What a person could become, or could try to become. Some people think I should be jealous of Indigenous Peoples' Day, or even hate them. But I think of Indy as family. I feel as if Indy might include an important part of my better nature, my own good side, come to life and permitted to grow bigger and healthier. Even if I wither away and die, in a way part of me will live on through Indy. I hope Indy will live forever."

"Is that really how you feel?" Fanny asked. "I never thought of you that way."

"I've had a good run," Columbus Day said. "In one form or another, I've lived for over five hundred years. How many days can say that? Twenty-four hours is the usual lifespan, for a day. I feel, to live even a minute longer than that is to be blessed."

Fanny laughed. "I would have thought you'd be full of pride and vanity. But you're surprisingly humble, and grateful."

Columbus Day said, "I come from a complicated family tree and upbringing. I was supposed to be involved in bringing all the best Christian virtues to newly discovered lands. Virtues that too often, I know, were honored only in the breach. Virtues that in many forms were already there. But I've never entirely forgotten them. I hope I never will forget them. Even though some people want to build an impenetrable wall to block me from any contact with them. But without humility, gratitude, compassion, and those other virtues, I am nothing good."

Columbus Day gestured at a portable file cabinet with wheels and a long luggage-style handle, which stood next to Fanny's bench. The cabinet was Fanny's everpresent companion, and almost infintely larger on the inside than on the outside. This generous piece of furniture shared much of its contents with anyone who asked. "I see you are full of dreams, not only of what could have been, but of what the future could become. Your dreams are so many, and sometimes so beautiful. You dream even of a Columbus Day better than what he is now. And you challenge me to strive towards becoming that day, to grow into those dreams. That's one of the things I love about you." He reached behind himself, and offered Fanny a white rose.

"A pure, chaste love..." she whispered.

"I am five hundred years old," he said softly, "and somewhat old-fashioned. At least for now, this is the only kind of love I can offer you. That I SHOULD dare to offer you."

"Yes..." Fanny said. She reached out. "I accept."

**Author's Note:**

> Columbus did a lot of pretty bad things, at least bordering on genocide. But the holiday? The son is not entirely responsible for the sins of the father. The son is, however, a member of one seriously dysfunctional family.


End file.
